The Art Of Machinima

29 Mar 2010 at 00:00:00 by Bill Vaughan

Since the arrival of the internet, a hobby has grown that is not only attached to gaming, but to TV series and other genres with large fan followings. This hobby is often referred to as 'vidding', but in gaming circles it's known better as machinima.

If you're not familiar with either, a brief description; Vidding is usually done by avid fans of a particular celebrity, TV show or, more often than not, a pairing of certain characters within a TV show. In a similar way to fan fiction, these short films sometimes extend a genuine storyline, taking characters beyond what is seen on screen by putting together clips in such as way that it implies certain events actually happened when they did not. Other times, the videos are merely a collection of a fan's favourite parts from their favourite show. In videogaming, machinima makers do a similar thing; Gamers take clips from whichever game they want to use, sometimes from more than one title for maximum effect, and piece them together to tell a story. In both cases, the finished product is often combined with a music track that fits the situation, be it unrequited love, battle or humour.

The internet is awash with these creations, as the technology required to make them has become more readily available over the last few years. Although most computer-savvy people wouldn't know where to start with such as task, the basic tools to make vids or machinima is pre-installed on most machines these days, but why go to all the trouble?

For fans of other media besides gaming, these fan-vids are often created and enjoyed by people in-between episodes or seasons, or to further the idea of a particular pairing that isn't actually portrayed in the show. For example, although for the majority of the long-running cult TV series the X-files the main characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were not romantically involved, there is a plethora of fan-made videos that would have you believe otherwise.

Machinima tends to differ here, in that it often takes the form of a guide, a compilation of best bits from a well-known fight or perhaps some PvP action. But dramas created from game footage have also become popular, despite the difficulty of obtaining suitable footage. Whereas fans of TV and film can use pre-filmed images of their subjects that lend themselves well to fan-vids, gamers must direct in-game characters from scratch, moving them to desired locations and having them perform actions to fit with the story. Most machinima makers, or machinimists as the are known, are forced to use third party programmes to do this. In the case of World of Warcraft, these programmes include the WoW Model and Map Viewer, which allow the creator to design and dress character models precisely how they wish, and to maybe put them in locations that would be troublesome to reach in-game.

Clearly, all this requires a lot more work than taking clips from a favourite series and putting them back together, though some may argue otherwise. The quality of these fan-made videos obviously impacts the time is takes to create them but I'd say, on the whole, machinimists have a harder time of things. Which begs the question, why do they do it?

The same rules can't apply to TV fans – gamers are more or less constantly able to access their guilty pleasure, they're not drip-fed hour-long snippets once a week then forced to wait months until a new batch of episodes hopefully arrive. For some reason, machinimists take time out of the thing they love doing, gaming, to make videos for others to enjoy. And no small amount of gaming time is sacrificed either, some projects have been known to take months.

Perhaps the base nature of gamers is one of the reasons some of them like to spend so much time on machinima. There are often competitions run within the various communities, prompting some of the best material ever created. So is it a desire to out-do others that drives these people on? As someone who has dabbled in video-making (of the TV variety I'm kind of ashamed to add) I can say that it's almost certainly a factor, but I think it has just as much to do with the desire to tell a story. Gamers just choose to do it through the material they know the best which, admittedly, takes a lot longer than using TV clips but allows greater flexibility.

There are some incredibly gifted machinimists out there who have strived to bring fans of not only the game which was used to create the film, but those who enjoy a good story something to get their teeth into. I'll leave you with a list of my favourite and perhaps most well-known machinimas, ranging from comedy to music video to drama. If anyone can point to a fan-made video of a TV series that required as much work as has gone into any of these, I'll be impressed.

I'll point out that the first film on the list below was made by animation, with the character models and their surroundings taken from WoW, but every movement and facial expression painstakingly mapped out by its creator, Percula. The maker of the second film, Selserene, personally provided the vocals for her machinima He Will Redeem Us.

The Craft of War: Blind
I'm So Sick
He Will Redeem Us
Frame of Mind

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